News Briefs 23 August 2019

Briefing journalists
in Geneva, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Spokesperson Babar Baloch, said that staff
had heard numerous testimonies from people whose family members had been killed
in Ituri province.

Severe underfunding
for aid work and insecurity involving the Hema and Lendu groups have meant that
increasing numbers are vulnerable and unable even to go home to pick up
essentials, he added.

“These people are not
even able to return,” Mr. Baloch said. “Many of them have reported people who
have tried – or relatives who have tried – to return to their villages and to
their homes have been reportedly attacked and killed.”

A new case of Ebola
has popped up in a remote, militia-controlled area in the eastern Democratic
Republic of the Congo, hundreds of miles away from the epicenter of the
yearlong outbreak.

The patient is a
70-year-old woman living in Pinga, a rural village located in Walikale
territory in North Kivu province, according to a recent statement from the
technical committee running the country’s Ebola response and reporting directly
to the president. The woman has been hospitalized in Pinga since Aug. 13 and
was placed in isolation on Aug. 15. Her blood samples were sent to a laboratory
in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, and came back positive for Ebola
virus disease on Aug. 17.

A rapid response team
was dispatched on Sunday and travelled by road, reaching Pinga a day later. A
helicopter team also arrived at the village Monday, according the technical
committee, which described Pinga as an “area of insecurity and poor
telephone network coverage.”

Despite “encouraging”
developments, insecurity across Somalia remains a serious concern, James Swan,
head of the UN Mission in Somalia (UNSOM), warned the Security Council, in his
first briefing to the world body since taking office.

Mr. Swan noted the
effectiveness of the collaboration between the UN and international partners,
and the Somali Security Forces working with the African Union Mission in
Somalia (AMISOM), which has seen areas near the capital Mogadishu taken back
from terror group al-Shabab, and stabilized.

However, Mr. Swan
noted that terrorism remains a threat to progress, citing the deadly al-Shabab
attack on the offices of the mayor of Mogadishu in July, which killed and
injured several Government officials.

Looking ahead to the
crucial 2020 election cycle, Mr. Swan described the upcoming poll as an
opportunity to advance democracy in the country, noting that preparations for
the one-person-one-vote poll, including a draft electoral law, are underway. He
called for the empowerment of women to be a central feature of the political
process and encouraged the Federal Government to establish a task force, to
ensure election security.

Somalia’s southern
state of Jubaland has re-elected Ahmed “Madobe” Mohamed Islam as its
leader following a disputed poll.

Ahmed defeated three
other candidates in a vote cast by the semi-autonomous region’s lawmakers in
the port city of Kismayu on Thursday.

The former rebel
leader won 56 of the 74 votes cast. Anab Mohamed Dahir, his closest challenger
and the only female candidate, won 17 votes, according to the results announced
by the regional electoral body.

The poll was delayed
by three days, with the regional electoral body saying it was to allow
candidates more time to register.

Six months after armed
CAR rebels signed a peace deal with the government, some have flagrantly
violated it, experts say, as citizens wonder why the warlords even have seats
at the top table.

The latest findings of
a panel of experts submitted to the African Union and United Nations, point to
a fragile peace, with dozens of violations reported weekly since the Khartoum
Agreement came into effect on 6 February 2019.

The experts pinned the
blame for the worst violation on the Return, Reclamation, Rehabilitation group
(or 3R), led by the notorious Sidiki Abbas. The rebel leader signed the peace
deal and is now an advisor to the CAR prime minister.

Central African
Republic may be getting safer, according to new figures from the United Nations
that show a sharp drop in the number of attacks and human rights abuses since
last year.

The head of human
rights for the U.N. mission in the country said a peace deal between the
government and 14 armed groups in February appeared to have allowed for a
relative respite, but was hesitant to declare it a success.

The U.N. peacekeeping
mission, called MINUSCA, recorded 565 incidents of abuse or human rights
violations from January through June, compared to 1,674 in the same period of
2018 and 1,097 the year before.

These include rapes,
attacks and the recruitment of children to armed groups. Of 1,082 victims, 403
were women and children.

Sudan’s new prime
minister has vowed to make peace with the country’s rebel factions and rebuild
its battered economy as he seeks to bring an end to the uncertainty that
followed the military overthrow of dictator Omar al-Bashir in April after
months of anti-government protests.

Abdalla Hamdok, a
respected former official of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, was sworn
in on Wednesday under a transitional agreement that will see the military share
power with civilian administrators until elections are held in three years’
time.

“The government’s top
priorities are to stop the war, build sustainable peace, address the severe
economic crisis and build a balanced foreign policy,” he said.

Thirty years after
seizing power in a military coup and four months after widespread protests
forced him from office, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, once one of the most notorious
leaders on the African continent, this week appeared in court.

He appeared not at the
International Criminal Court that charged him with genocide in 2010 for trying
to wipe out non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, but in the east African country
he has dominated for the past three decades.

Dressed in immaculate
white robes, Mr Bashir sat in a black metal cage as prosecutors and
investigators described the corruption charges against him. The former
president, who is expected to plead not guilty, spoke only to confirm his name,
his age and his residence — Khartoum’s Kober prison.

South Sudan activists
on Monday began a campaign to pressure the country’s warring parties to meet a
fast-approaching deadline to form a unity government as part of their 2018
peace agreement.

The Civil Society
Forum, a coalition of more than 100 organisations, on Monday marked the
beginning of a 90-day countdown to the November deadline for the ruling party
and opposition to form a government.

“We have not got
much time left. There are a lot of tasks that need to be accomplished and business
should not remain as usual,” Geoffrey Lou Duke, a member of the coalition,
told AFP.

The international
community has appealed to South Sudan to expedite the implementation of a 2018
peace deal, with only three months remaining before the pre-transition period
to form a government end.

The appeal was made
during a consultative meeting that began in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa
on Wednesday on the status of implementation of the Revitalized Agreement on
the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) — a deal that gave a
new lease of life to a 2015 agreement that failed.

Based on the
agreement, which was signed in Addis Ababa in September 2018 under the
mediation of East Africa’s 8-nation trading and security bloc Intergovernmental
Authority on Development (IGAD), the South Sudanese government and opposition
should have formed a transitional government in May leading to elections in 30
months.

Polisario Front’s
Representative to Australia and New Zealand, Mr. Kamal Fadel, considered in an
opinion published yesterday on the Wall Street Journal, that maintaining the
status quo in Western Sahara, as Morocco wishes, is dangerous to the region and
costly to the UN and the US and the international community at large.

Answering Dion
Nissenbaum’s article and video package on Western Sahara (“Dormant War Draws
U.S. Spotlight,” published last August 12th on Wall Street Journal, Kamal drew
the attention that “reading the article one might think that maintaining the
status quo was the best option available for the question of Western Sahara.
This is an idea that Morocco has been tirelessly lobbying for but it’s a
dangerous option not only for Western Sahara but for the whole region. It’s
also a costly one for the UN and for that matter the USA.”

He warned that “the
patience of the Saharawi people is running out,” recalling that “Morocco has
failed to win the hearts and minds of Saharawis during 44 years of occupation.”

Namibian President and
former Chairman of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Mr. Hage
Geingob, affirmed in his speech at the opening session of the 39th SADC Summit
in Tanzania that the issue of Western Sahara is a decolonization issue and the
right of self-determination of the Sahrawi people.

The Namibian President
affirmed the SADC’s firm stance on the Sahrawi issue, recalling that the group
organized last March in South Africa a conference in solidarity with the
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, and thanked the President of South Africa for
hosting this conference.

The 39th Summit of the
Southern African Development Community (SADC) held in the Tanzanian capital of
Dar es Salaam started on Saturday. It will continue until Monday, during which
Tanzanian President, Mr. John Magufuli, will assume the rotating presidency of
the SADC. (SPS)

The Chief Justice of
Swaziland / eSwatini Bheki Maphalala said the Judicial Service Commission (JSC)
was under siege from a political elite that he called ‘treasonous’.

He said it was so
powerful it had taken the constitutional powers of key institutions of state.

It was undermining and
interfering with the constitutional mandate of the JSC, he said. The judges of
the superior courts (Supreme and High Courts) and the specialist tribunals are
appointed by the King on the advice of the JSC and magistrates are appointed by
the JSC.

Swaziland is not a
democracy and is ruled by King Mswati III as an absolute monarch. The King
appoints the Chief Justice and all members of the JSC. The Chief Justice also
chairs the JSC. The Swazi Constitution of 2005 confirms the King’s position as
absolute monarch.

Emmerson Mnangagwa’s
strategy of coercion and dialogue has hit a series of hurdles. These include
the continued opposition by the MDC and on-going scepticism of international
players about the regime’s so-called reformist narrative, writes Brian Raftopoulos.

Since the November
2017 coup that toppled Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and the elections in 2018, the
regime of President Emmerson Mnangagwa has forged two forms of rule. These have
been based on coercion on the one hand, and on the other dialogue.

Following the 2018
general elections and the violence that marked its aftermath, the Mnangagwa
regime once again resorted to coercion in the face of the protests in January
2019. The protests were in response to the deepening economic crisis in the
country, and part of the opposition strategy to contest the legitimacy of the
government.

Police in Zimbabwe
arrested a senior opposition official on Thursday on charges of failing to stop
a banned protest last week in the capital, his lawyer said.

The Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC), which accuses President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s
government of repression and economic mismanagement, called a demonstration
last Friday as the start of a nationwide protest movement but it was banned by
the police.

But some opposition
supporters still turned up for the protest and were subsequently dispersed by
police who used batons, teargas and water cannon.

Government is unaware
of any cases of abductions despite the numerous claims from prodemocracy groups
as well as the opposition, Home Affairs minister Cain Mathema said Thursday.

Numerous opposition
activists have reportedly been abducted, tortured and left for dead the latest
being comedian Samantha Kureya popularly known as Gonyeti who late Wednesday
was seized by armed men and later dumped in Harare’s north western suburbs.

In an interview with
the media, Mathema denied any knowledge or receiving reports of these abductions.

“I do not know what
you are talking about! I do not know what you are talking about! You want me to
react to something that I am hearing from you.

Kenya has been given
the African Union’s (AU) endorsement for a UN Security Council (UNSC) seat
after Nairobi defeated Djibouti with 37 votes to 13 during a vote at AU headquarters
in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

Wednesday’s voting was
the second round after Kenya initially got 34, Djibouti 15, with two
abstentions during the first round.

Kenya originally
defeated Djibouti with 33 votes on August 5 while there were 16 abstentions.

However, rules of
procedure which require that substantial decisions be made on a two-thirds
majority rule calculated on the basis of the total 55 member states of the AU,
meant Nairobi had fallen short, the East African reported.

Mozambique’s former
rebel group-turned-opposition party Renamo on Friday said its members came
under attack just days after the signing of a historic peace deal aimed at
ending years of conflict.

Renamo spokesperson
Jose Manteigas said dozens of party members have been assaulted by police and
members of the ruling Frelimo party across the country, adding that the attacks
could threaten the landmark peace agreement.

He said Renamo members
have been beaten and their houses and other properties torched in the provinces
of Tete, Zambezia, Inhambane and Gaza, mainly in night-time attacks since
August 8.

That was just two days
after the much-hailed and long-awaited peace deal was signed by President
Filipe Nyusi and Renamo leader Ossufo Momade on August 6.